ATi makes physical effects for future graphic circuits

AGEIA has made a name with its dedicated physics processor PhysX which will make it possible to use lare amounts of physucal effects in games without any extra load for the GPU. The is will result in more realistic games and physical effects which is essential for realistic environment. Today’s graphic circuits can’t handle physical effects to the extent that game developers wants them to and therefor we require a dedicated hardware in the form of the PhysX-processor. This is something ATi don’t believe we will be needing in the future as tpday’s graphic cards can handle the calculations required. But it will not be until we see circuits with more pipelines, e.g. Xbox 360’s graphic circuit with 48 ALUs, the performance will be enough.

ATi talked about this during the Radeon X1K event in Ibiza and it also discussed the possibility for using parallel chips, like a PhysX processor integrated on the graphic card. Whether this will actually get past the planning stage and out on the market remains to see, but at least we are about to see more interest for physical effects among the graphic card manufacturers.

:: Read on about ATi’s plans at X-bit Labs